


Deeds Not Words

by SirJosephBanksFRS



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-05 00:27:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJosephBanksFRS/pseuds/SirJosephBanksFRS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imprisoned in the Temple in Paris, Stephen saves Jack's queue from an ignominious end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deeds Not Words

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 16 December 2013 entry of the Perfect Duet Advent Calendar

Four weeks after their arrival at the Temple, Stephen Maturin came to the conclusion that Gedymin Jagiello was the most accomplished slumberer he had ever observed.

“It is quite remarkable,” said he to his particular friend and fellow prisoner, Jack Aubrey, as he listened down the passageway to the sounds of Jagiello sleeping two small rooms away, “that he may fall asleep anywhere at any time, is the deepest sleeper I have ever observed, and he seems to require more restorative sleep than one would think humanly possible.” He looked in Jagiello’s direction, from whence the sounds of his regular breathing and very soft snores were evidence that he was, indeed, asleep again. “Yet he is in the pink of health; indeed, vibrantly so.” Being imprisoned, Jack had seemingly caught up on his sleep and rarely exceeded eight hours a night at most, whereas Jagiello could easily sleep eleven hours at a stretch, waking finally only in order to make water.

"He is most likely still growing,” Jack said, shuffling the deck of cards, as they were playing piquet, “and all that beauty sleep apparently has great effect.”

“There may be much in what you say, brother. I wonder, though, if it has anything to do with latitude. Such has always been my observation. I wonder exactly what the latitude is in the part of Lithuania from which he originates. Those from the more northern climes seem to generally be far more accomplished sleepers than those from the south.” As he said this, he gazed benignly over his spectacles at Jack Aubrey, who had been the previous title holder for the best sleeper he had ever known.

Stephen Maturin himself was amongst the worst of sleepers and he regularly partook of the alcoholic tincture of laudanum to avail himself of sleep. He had been born in Roselló in Catalunya and like the majority of Catalans he had ever known, he was a night owl and slept poorly. Bridie Coolan, his wet nurse in Ireland, had slept with him in her bed, allowing him to nurse at will in his sleep until he was past his fourth year because she said it was the only way that either of them would get any sleep, he had been so sickly in infancy.

Jack dealt the last card to Stephen. He then leaned back in the chair and scratched his head. Stephen watched him and then picked up his hand of cards and moved them across the table.

“Pray give me your hand: not the cards, your actual hand,” Maturin said, reaching forward to Jack and Jack extended his right hand. Stephen examined his nails, which were black with dirt under the cuticles of his index, middle and ring fingers of his right hand. "Mmm.”

“What? What is it?” Jack said frowning.

“Pass me the candle, if you please.” Jack passed him the candle and Stephen stood up. “Just sit still a minute, Jack, will you?” Jack sat stone still as Stephen rose and stood next to him, holding the candle up and lifting a golden strand of buttercup yellow hair up over his right ear, examining his hairline above his ear and the backside of his ear. “Just as I thought.”

“What?” Jack cried, alarmed. Stephen put the candle down.

“You have a guest, my dear. Several guests, in fact -- _Pediculus humanus capitis_. I told you I did not like the look of that barber that they sent up to us in Brest. You should not have used that tortoiseshell comb. Never use any barber's comb but one that is metal and may be heated in flames to cleanse it of lice and nits and that you are certain has been thus cleansed between customers."

“Oh, my God, do you jest?” Jack said, utterly horrified. He had never had lice in his life and associated them with gaol fever and assorted pestilence. Lousiness in general was considered one step above having the plague in the Royal Navy and frigates occasionally dismissed men if they were irremediably lice-prone. It was extremely rare among sailors, given their pigtails. He felt nauseated and his head and face began to itch intensely at the the realisation.

“I am afraid not, joy. You have head lice. Pray do not be alarmed; they are quite harmless. Much better than their cousins, _Pediculus humanus humanus_. You cannot get gaol fever from them nor any other disease. They are mostly a nuisance. Jack, are you alright?” Jack appeared dumbstruck, almost aghast.

“Then I must have all my hair shorn, surely,” he said, stricken, looking at the end of his glossy thick queue, neatly tied off and hanging down over his shoulder to the middle of his powerful bicep, the shiny black satin ribbon now suspect in his eyes. He was shaken to realise the degree of his vanity over his queue -- a pigtail in the context of their situation was beyond trivial and his reaction discomfited him, though not as much as the thought of the entirety of his buttercup yellow hair being shaved off and burned. The idea pained him as much as the prospect of being marked as having been louse-infested by having his head completely shaved, all the more humiliating as a prisoner of war in an enemy nation. Jack Aubrey was no Beau Brummel but the Royal Navy put personal cleanliness far, far ahead of godliness. Stephen Maturin beheld his sorely vexed countenance, all his reactions writ large upon it and spoke quickly.

“No, no, soul, that is wholly unnecessary, unless you so desire it. If we were aboard a ship and you were occupied day and night running a man of war or we were in a crowded, louse-infested prison, then I would agree, but given we are virtually alone in a prison with hours to kill, there is no need. I shall direct Rousseau to take a small amount of money to bring me a very fine metal nit comb tomorrow and I shall rid you of them myself. That is all that is necessary: a very fine metal comb, a cup of vinegar and a bit of olive oil nightly and the flame of the candle."

“Might you?” Jack said, dubiously. “Truly? I need not cut off my hair?”

“Never in life,” Stephen said and he bent over and embraced Jack. “Pray do not grieve yourself over this in the least, Jack. Two weeks of combing at most and you shall be restored to your pristine self.” Jack was stiff in his arms and leaned back and away from Stephen's head and face.

“Stephen, should you -- will you not catch it as well, being so close to me?”

“Never fear. I cannot catch them from you,” Stephen said, betraying more than a little satisfaction in his voice.

“You cannot? How d’ye know?”

“Because I have never had lice though I have been surrounded by others who have, many, many times, from childhood on.”

“Why is that?”

“The parish priest told the Colonel when I was a boy that it was because I must be a would-be saint, but I suspect I do not suit them in some way, a puzzle which natural philosophy may some day answer. Perhaps my blood is too choleric and bitter; perhaps my very person is poison to them or my hair will not support them,” Stephen said, touching his very short, very thin hair. "It is good fortune for a medical man -- I should have been crawling with them incessantly at the Hôtel-Dieu. Poor Dupuytren was not so fortunate -- we dissected a very fresh corpse together and he got them when we leaned over and reflected the scalp back. He ended up having me check every patient we saw together before he would touch them and I never got lice, no matter how lousy they were. Dupuytren had long hair he wore loose, like a cavalier back then," Stephen said, reflecting how foolhardy Dupuytren had been in those days of the Terror, given possession of aristocratic long hair and a denunciation alone could warrant to a trip on the tumbrel to the guillotine.

After balking that no client had ever contracted lice in the Temple and crying out, _“Il n'y a jamais eu de poux dans le Temple!”_ and then being reassured by Stephen that they had originated in Brest and that he would cleanse the Temple of them, Rousseau brought the comb and vinegar and extra candles that afternoon. A cruet of olive oil was left in their cell for their meals. Stephen sent Jack's shirt, linen and bed linens daily to Mme. veuve Lehidieux with a request that all be pressed with a very hot iron after laundering in hot water. Jack left off wearing his coat entirely for the duration.

Whilst Jagiello slept each night, Stephen fell to his task of ridding Jack of the lice by first wetting his scalp with vinegar mixed with water to loosen the nits, leaving it to semi-dry and then applying a small amount of the oil to facilitate the combing. He then combed out Jack's hair in sections, one strand at a time from the base of the scalp out to the ends. He burned the lice and nits in the flame of the candle after each stroke, afterwards wiping the ash on a handkerchief. Poor Jack was appalled and mortified by his state of infestation and Stephen distracted him as much as he could by bringing up old times, old actions, old friends and so the evenings passed. Jack had significantly less lice with each day; on the third day of combing, there were none left that Stephen could see and his remaining task was ridding Jack of every single possible nit, an exceedingly tedious chore given the thickness of Jack's hair. Stephen asked Jack to tell him of the ships he had served on before they met. After another two days, he could find no more nits and he washed Jack's hair with their hand basin water and a bar of _savon á la lavande_ , yet another unsolicited love token from Mme. Lehidieux to Jagiello. Extreme caution to prevent reinfestation required that he comb out and check Jack's hair daily for at least another nine days.

With his infestation now eradicated, Jack could actually take pleasure in the evenings of Stephen's ministrations. Stephen enjoyed it as well. The last day he was to comb out Jack's hair, he emptied the scant remainder of the olive oil into two small corked ampullae to send the empty cruet back to Mme. Lehidieux the next day to be refilled. He slowly combed out Jack's hair, barely looking at the comb as he did so and he and Jack gazed in each other's faces in the dim candlelight and spoke less and less. Jack caught Stephen's hand as he was about to pick up the comb once more and brought it to his lips and held it there, pressing it against them as he looked up into Stephen’s face. They silently looked into each other's eyes. In the last eight years, they had never come close to exchanging even one chaste kiss without at least the bulkheads and a firmly locked door standing between them and anyone else. Stephen looked up at the judas holes. They were unoccupied, as they had been for the previous three hours. His hand trembled in Jack's.

"Stephen," Jack said quietly, his voice very deep and almost hoarse, "pray blow out the candle." Usually, they let it burn itself out, for it was black as a tomb after sunset in their cell. They had no tinder box; Rousseau came and lit a candle nightly for them, from which they lit each subsequent candle. Stephen blew out the candle and Jack rose from his chair and they embraced. Stephen laid his hand over Jack's breast and felt Jack's heart race as their lips met and they kissed for the first time in more than four months. Stephen was lightheaded as his own pulse quickened and he embraced Jack around the neck as he tasted the last of the claret in Jack's mouth. Jack felt Stephen’s stubble biting into the bristles on his own face at the side of his mouth as he kissed Stephen like a man dying of thirst quaffing cold, clean water at last. After several minutes, they made their way to Jack's bed, such as it was, and they fell upon each other as noiselessly as possible.

"Dear joy, I need you so," Stephen breathed in his ear. They had been prisoners in the Temple for six weeks now and Stephen feared the interrogation he was dreading would commence any day without warning. The anticipation weighed heavily upon him. The lice had at least been a distraction and he had spent part of his sleepless nights reflecting on God's ineffable wisdom and the seeming place of the head louse in the order of creation, pleasant thoughts compared to those of an interrogation at the hands of the intelligence branch of the French army. Now he and Jack would mingle their souls once more and it was a tonic for him, mind and body.

They undressed silently in Jack’s bed and held each other. Stephen felt the tension that had consumed his person since they first arrived in Paris loosening, slipping away from him, feeling the strength of Jack's arms holding him, the massive weight and solidity of Jack’s nearly seventeen stone against him, his own heart slowing, a weight falling away from him as Jack kissed and caressed him in the darkness. The tightness of his ligaments released and the clenching pain in his hands was gone. They had both missed this intimacy for what seemed such a very long time that they lay there embracing, kissing, touching each other's faces and feeling the pressure of each other's persons in their arms for more than an hour before they started to make love in earnest. Jagiello snored very loudly and then ceased abruptly mid-snore. They both froze momentarily and listened keenly and then Jack resumed fellating Stephen. Stephen had brought the two ampullae of oil to the bed with him; he opened one and spread it on his hands and then very gently lowered the ampulla to within an inch of the stone floor so it would not shatter when he released it from his outstretched fingertips. He then took Jack's hard prick in hand and importuned him silently. They kissed and embraced each other tightly as Jack slowly penetrated him. Jack closed his eyes as he concentrated on the adagio he was playing on Stephen's person, the music they were making together, his heart overflowing with more feelings than he could ever put words to, restraining himself from uttering a sound though tears ran from his eyes. Stephen kissed his tears away, running his hands through Jack's hair and pulled his face forward to kiss him as his own hips moved to increase the tempo of their coupling. He gasped very softly with pleasure as Jack found the sweet spot within him and then stroked his prepuce. He pressed his lips against Jack's neck when finally he spent hard, his entire body trembling. Jack stopped moving and waited for him to finish and then resumed, kissing Stephen deeply as he came off. They lay there not moving for several minutes, feeling each other's heart beating against their respective breasts.

"Do promise me you will return the favour this very evening, old Stephen," Jack whispered into his ear. "Pray do not make me beg, though I will."

"Turnabout is fair play in these matters," Stephen said very quietly, kissing him. "Nothing should make me happier, dearest soul." They spent the next three hours so engaged and Stephen finally staggered off to his own bed as Jack sank deeper in sleep, dreaming that they were back in Stephen's castle in Catalunya in the year three, endlessly making love in Stephen's bed there.

Jagiello was mystified the next morning by the fact that Captain Aubrey and Dr. Maturin were still both asleep so late when he emerged dressed from his room at the end of the passageway. They never had been such late risers. He looked out the window to smile and blow kisses at Mme. Lehidieux, saddened that his friends were bereft of the love he now experienced daily.


End file.
